Page 18 of Thug

“No.”

I knew where Price lived long before he stepped into my bar, but so did most people in town. Her not knowing anything about her man was frustrating. Hopefully, she knew his name. There were only six Rebels, and I knew all their road names.

“Well, I can ask around,” I said. “What was his name?”

“Randall,” she said. “Randall Holderman.”

What an awful name. It was no wonder bikers used road names instead of their real ones. “Do you know what his road name was?”

“His what?”

Oh. My. God.

I let out an exhaustive mental sigh. “The handle he used in the club,” I said in more of a plead for help than an explanation. “His road name. It would have been on a patch that was sewn on the front of his kutte.”

“His what?”

“Vest,” I snapped. “His leather vest. It would have had a weird name sewn on it. Like Rowdy, Tiny, Rooster, or Ding-Dong. Something.”

“Sorry.” She shrugged. “I really didn’t pay much attention to that kind of stuff.”

I wanted to scream. A requirement of any MC was that their members wore their vests when they rode their motorcycles, regardless of whether they were riding with the club, or alone. In Arizona, bikers rode their motorcycles twelve months of the year. I suspected she saw his kutte no less than thirty times. Her inattentive nature made me itch.

It was surprising he lasted thirty days. I would probably stop fucking her long before that. Even so, the mystery of her missing biker was one I wanted to solve.

“Well,” I said. “I’ll nose around about a guy named Randall Holderman. If I find anything out, I’ll let you know.”

“Okay. Thanks.” She smiled and then gestured toward the retail area with her eyes. “Do you want to look at some other stuff?”

As intrigued as I was about her missing biker, I couldn’t stand one more second of her. Each minute in her presence was aging me measurably. I didn’t need new shorts, anyway. Leaving a lasting impression with Price wasn’t going to come from something I wore.

“No, thank you,” I replied. “I need to get to the bar and start digging up information on your missing biker.”

I turned toward the dressing room. Price McNealy and Randall Holderman were my new men of interest. I needed to be cautious on how I proceeded with each of them. If not, I might end up being the one cut in pieces and spread out over the Sonoran Desert.

I knew that much, and it didn’t take thirty days of fucking Price McNealy to figure it out.

6

Price

Carp studied me for a long moment. He cleared his throat. “You’re awful fuckin’ quiet.”

“He’s always quiet when he’s thinking,” Brisco said.

“Not much to think about as far as I’m concerned,” Carp said. “That Pig Pen fella’s pretty much off-limits. Doing something to him is only gonna—”

I looked up from my makeshift desk. “Nobody’s off-limits,” I growled. “Nobody.”

Carp’s hands shot up like he was being held at gunpoint. “God damn, Price,” he whined. “You know what I meant.”

To encourage an honest line of communication, we used the garage for club meetings. The large open space allowed everyone to feel at ease and unthreatened during our weekly gatherings. The last thing I wanted to do was place the men in a situation that made them feel intimidated.

My office, on the other hand, was a place where I was supposed to be able to think, preferably alone. It was rare, however, that I got the opportunity to use it for that purpose. Instead, it had become a place for the club’s confident and outspoken to voice their respective opinions.

I locked eyes with Carp and rocked my chair onto its back legs. “No. I don’t know what you meant. Why don’t you enlighten me?”

“Off-limits,” he said. “As in, it’s not a good fuckin’ idea to go poking around Pig Pen’s playing place.”